Dab Kinzer eBook

The water was perfectly smooth; but the boat was full
in an instant, and nearly a bushel of freshly-caught
and ill-tempered crabs were manoeuvring in all directions
around the woolly head, which was all their late captor
could now keep in sight.

“Up with the grapnel, Ford,” shouted Dab.
“Take an oar: we’ll both row.
He can swim like a duck, but he might split his throat.”

“Or get scared to death.”

“Or those crabs might go for him, and eat him
up.”

“How he does yell!”

CHAPTER VII.

A VERY ACCIDENTAL CALL.

At the very moment when the angry crab closed his
nippers on the bare big toe of Dick Lee, and his shrill
note of discomfort rang across the inlet, the shriller
whistle of the engine announced the arrival of the
morning train from the city, at the little station
in the village.

A moment or so later, a very pretty young lady was
standing beside a trunk on the platform, trying to
get some information from the flagman.

“Can you tell me where Mr. Foster lives?”

“That’s the gimlet-eyed lawyer from New
Yark?”

“Yes, he’s from New York,” said
the young lady, smiling in his face. “Where
does he live?”

“He’s got the sassiest boy, thin.
Is it him as took the Kinzer house?”

“I think likely it is. Can you tell me
how to get there?”

“Thim Kinzers is foine people. The widdy
married one of the gurrels to Misther Morris.”

“But how can I get to the house?”

“Is it there ye’re afther goin’?—­Hey,
Michael, me boy, bring up yer owld rattlethrap, and
take the leddy’s thrunk. She’ll be
goin’ to the Kinzer place. Sharp, now.”

“I should say it was,” muttered the young
lady, as the remains of what had been a carryall were
pulled up beside the platform by the skinny skeleton
of what might once have been a horse. “It’s
a rattletrap.”

There was no choice, however; for that was the only
public conveyance at the station, and the trunk was
already whisked in behind the dashboard, and the driver
was waiting for her.

He could afford to wait, as it would be some hours
before another train would be in.

There was no door to open in that “carriage.”
It was all door except the top and bottom, and the
pretty passenger was neither helped nor hindered in
finding her place on the back seat.

If the flagman was more disposed to ask questions
than to answer them, Michael said few words of any
kind except to his horse. To him, indeed, he
kept up a constant stream of encouraging remarks, the
greatest part of which would have been difficult for
an ordinary hearer to understand.

Very likely the horse knew what they meant; for he
came very near breaking from a limp into a trot several
times, under the stimulus of all that clucking and
“G’lang, now!”

The distance was by no means great, and Michael seemed
to know the way perfectly. At least he answered,
“Yes’m, indade,” to several inquiries
from his passenger, and she was compelled to be satisfied
with that.